When Delaware Theatre Company executive director Bud Martin stepped in front of a preview audience Wednesday that would watch him act on stage for only the second time in 37 years, two things ran through his mind.

One is not printable in a family paper.

The other was: "I'm thirsty." But he couldn't drink anything because he couldn't go to the bathroom during the two-actor "Heisenberg," which lasts 90 minutes with no intermission.

The play, which runs through Feb. 25 at the Wilmington Riverfront theater, focuses on the relationship between Martin's character, Alex Priest, a 70-something Irishman living in London, and Georgie Burns, a 40-something New Jersey woman also living there, played by DTC favorite Karen Peakes. Both are wounded people who have trouble connecting with others.

Martin had seen the show in New York City, with Mary Louise Parker and Denis Arndt, who was nominated for a 2017 best actor Tony award for his performance. He immediately thought it was perfect for Peakes, with whom he had worked in DTC's "The Explorer's Club," "Hetty Feather," "The War of the Roses" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

He sent Peakes the script to ask what she thought. She loved it. She assumed he meant to star in it with her, so when he started talking about auditioning actors for the role, she was startled.

"Why?" she asked. She wanted to do it with him, she said.

"I said no," Martin remembers. "It's fine for people to see my work. They can look at my shows and say, 'Oh, I didn't like that show, but when you are on stage, they say, 'Oh, I didn't like HIM." And he laughs an evil little laugh.

Maybe you'll change your mind after auditions, she told him. When they didn't find anyone they really loved during auditions, they approached a friend of Peakes, who was interested, but ultimately didn't want to devote that much time to the project.

Karen Peakes, left, and Delaware Theater Company executive director Bud Martin star in DTC's production of "Heisenberg."(Photo: Courtesy of Matt Urban/Mobius New Media)

By then, Martin and Peakes were in the middle of rehearsals for "Something Wicked This Way Comes" in the fall of 2017. On a walk along the Riverfront, Martin asked Peakes, "Are you sure you're up for this?" "100 percent," she told him.

Martin decided he might not have another chance to get back on stage, so he jumped in.

Executive and artistic director at DTC since spring 2012, Martin has a bachelor's degree in English and theater from DeSales University and a master's in theater from Villanova University. He worked for 10 years in theater as a teacher and professional director, then left it for the business world. He started five successful companies from 1982 to 2008, four of which went public, but returned to theater in late 2007 as producing artistic director of Act II Playhouse in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

Martin in recent years had toyed with the idea of returning to the state, he says. He briefly stood in for an actor in a ACT II show when the run was extended, but to audition and work, he'd need to be in Philadelphia more, and that would take him away from DTC, where he's not only the boss, but also a major donor.

When he told his wife, Kate, he wanted to do "Heisenberg," she reacted with, "You want to do WHAT?" But if he was going to do it, she was happy he was doing it with Peakes, a generous actress who wouldn't let Martin flounder on stage.

Martin decided not to direct the show, and asked Matt Pfeiffer of Philadelphia to take on the tricky job of working for Martin, who remained producer and artistic director, but also supervising his on-stage performance.

"We were joking about me having to cede power," Martin says. "I've always been in power in theater or business. I was the boss."

Pfeiffer, who is an actor in addition to a director, found Martin to be gracious and respectful.

"When you're a director, you're responsible for everything that's happening all of the time in the rehearsal, and there's a great freedom when you're an actor that you don't have to bear the responsibility of that," Pfeiffer said. "You just have to be responsible for yourself. I think Bud was eager to relinquish having to be responsible for the entire production. He was very trusting of me to guide him in the performance. It made it very easy to collaborate."

Now, Martin says, not being in charge was "almost" refreshing because he didn't have to do things like sweat the details in production meetings. Almost.

Peakes says the real surprise of working with Martin on stage is that it hasn't been more unusual.

"I think I came in, and we all did, knowing Bud hasn't been on a stage in a long time," she says. "I think I came in with lowered expectations, but from day one, it's been, 'Oh, he's an actor. This is going to be fine.'"

Martin went to work well before Christmas memorizing lines, following the only piece of advice one of his older actor friends gave him: start early because at the age of 67, it was going to take longer. And it did, Martin says.

Delaware Theater Company executive director Bud Martin, left, and Karen Peakes star in DTC's production of "Heisenberg."(Photo: Courtesy of Matt Urban/Mobius New Media)

At work, he ran lines with assistant stage manager Emily Baver when possible and at home in the morning with his wife.

He discovered that getting ready for a rehearsal as a director is much easier and less time consuming than getting ready for a rehearsal as an actor, a point that Pfeiffer, who also acts, agrees with.

Martin also had to master an Irish accent. He had plenty of friends who told him that they hated Irish accents used on stages because it makes everyone sound like a leprechaun.

But he also had some secret weapons, including a dialogue coach, equine pal and an actress friend.

One of his friends, Ivan Dowling, moved from Ireland 20 years ago. He takes care of Martin's horse, and Martin and Dowling often ride together. The thing that Martin noticed about Dowling's voice was that his accent had softened and wasn't always consistent.

He and dialogue coach D'Arcy Dersham of Philadelphia taped Dowling reading a series of sentences with tricky vowel sounds, as well as a few passages of the play so they could model Martin's accent after that.

When he and Dowling rode together, he could practice and Dowling could correct him. At the same time, on Martin's way to work, he would call actress Clare O'Malley, who had starred in DTC's "Hetty Feather" in spring 2017 and who happens to be from Ireland and talk in an Irish accent to her.

Dersham came to rehearsals, where she helped him focus on details. He was particularly proud that after the first preview show Wednesday, she told him, 'Wow. I stopped listening to the words and listened to the play."

The production and the seating for the audience will be on the stage itself at DTC, with the audience on three sides of the actors, creating an intimate experience. That will limit tickets to about 160 per show.

"It's very quiet and very human, and I think the production that we've made here offers us a chance to see actors working and breathing quite up close," Pfeiffer says. "And that makes the perspective of the play quite unique."

"Heisenberg" revolves around a sort of real-life application of German physicist Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says that it's impossible to measure both the position and the velocity of something exactly.

In the play, Martin's character really likes music and he's trying to describe it to Georgie. "You can hear it," Alex says, "but that's not listening to it. The secret to music is that music doesn't exist in the notes. It exists in the space between the notes."

People worry too much about where things are or where they are going and need to live right now — between the notes, so to speak — and left life happen, Martin says.

"If you just live in the moment, you might find something astonishing with each other," he says.

Peakes says working in the moment is the key to a successful production, and that Martin never tried to direct on the side or otherwise be anything than an actor she was cast with.

"It's an entirely different relationship," she says. "It's more intimate. It's more personal. But it's also a working relationship. He's just really given himself over to being in the moment and being an actor. We're listening to each other and relating."

And if you want to make Martin happy, don't see him. See Alex.

Two of his good friends were in the audience Wednesday night, and they couldn't have made him any happier when they told him, "Five minutes into the show, we forgot who you were."